


The Care and Feeding of Your Robot Body

by HopefulNebula



Category: Lock In - John Scalzi
Genre: Gen, In-Universe Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 02:11:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18111137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/pseuds/HopefulNebula
Summary: Or, an actual Haden's guide to the world of threeps.





	The Care and Feeding of Your Robot Body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckybarton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/gifts).



**Boring Preliminaries**

So you're getting your first threep. Good for you! There are a lot of quick-start guides out there, but most of them are for individual models and nearly all of them were written by people who got sick, were miserable for two weeks, and recovered. I'm publishing this guide so you know in general what to look for and what to avoid. (I'm publishing it anonymously because I'm going to be name-dropping a few specific models here, and I don't want that trash talk to be linked to my brickspace identity. Suffice to say, I've been locked in for most of my life and I've gone through a lot of tech in that time.)

Parts of this guide are going to be US-centric, so parts of your experience are going to be different depending on where you are. I don't pretend to be an expert on anything but my own experience here.

Finally: don't take what I say here as absolute gospel. You're the person who best understands your needs, and if your experience is different from mine, please comment. (I'll pin any particularly useful comments.)

**The Basics**

 

There are a lot of threep models out there, and a lot of factors that go into your choice. It's like buying a car except your health insurance has a say in the matter. After Abrams-Kettering, a few insurers have changed their subsidy programs, so it may benefit you to see what they offer before settling on a model. If you're buying used, or from an individual rather than a dealership, you get less choice and less help, but it's also way less expensive. You know your own priorities here.

If you're at the point of actually buying a threep, you should already have a well-established neural net. Most dealerships won't even consider selling to you until you've had at least six months to let things fully settle, and 14 states (as of my writing this) legally enforce that waiting period. Basically, if you're at the stage where everything will randomly smell purple for ten minutes a day, you're not ready to push around physical machinery. That said, most manufacturers these days have storefronts in the Agora where they let you simulate an interface with anything they make, and those sims are a lot less regulated. If you have the time and can stand the sales pitch, it's a good idea to try out a simulator before your first time trying a real threep. It's also useful if you're thinking about making a drastic upgrade. If you're going from a Metro Courier to literally anything else, for example, spend some time in a sim before you go far. Otherwise you'll find yourself overcorrecting every motion and your shiny new threep will end up facedown in the neighbor's geraniums.

(Not that I'd know that from experience. Don't believe what my neighbors tell you.)

Anyway, the main concern should be whether you're comfortable using a specific threep. Does it respond well to your commands? Is the size appropriate for your daily activities? It may not feel completely natural at first, and it likely won't be the exact size or shape you were used to before being locked in, but spend some time interfacing with the machine before you spend any money.

 

**On Features**

The next thing you consider should be features. If you're interested in data recording, for instance, you'll want to avoid anything made by an EU-based company. If you plan on spending a lot of time in a car, look into something that lets you interface with your car's autonav. There are way more potential features than I can list here, and most of them are trivial to have added to pretty much any model (as long as you can pay). I cannot stress this enough, though: do not go overboard on the aftermarket additions.

Yes, you've been locked in for at least a year at this point. Yes, you probably haven't seen anything outside the Agora in that length of time. This does not mean that you need every single addition. The more you add to the original design, the slower and more difficult everything you do becomes. More than that, with each addition you run the risk of your new parts refusing to play nicely with each other and causing issues. If you want higher performance, you're better off getting something designed for the task instead of putting a ton of add-ons into a basic shell.

The thing to remember is that a threep is only a machine. While the newer ones do a lot of really cool work to make sure they move as we intend them, in the end they only have as much processor power as the person interfacing with them. Don't end up with more machine than you can control.

 

**On Money & Obstacles**

Buying a threep is kind of weird when you think about it. I'm not talking about the tech itself (although that's weird too) - I mean the buying experience itself. It combines the oppressive bureaucracy of health insurance with the expense and skuzziness of buying a car. Executives who make a huge public show of supporting Hadens at all costs often think it's perfectly fine for a high schooler to go to school in a threep the size of a six-year-old when their insurance won't pay for an upgrade more than once a decade. (That one wasn't me, actually, but it's not a unique story.)

I'm privileged enough to have had multiple threeps since being locked in, but not privileged enough that I've been able to afford the full sticker price. So I've learned a lot in my time and now I'm passing that knowledge on.

  * Before you start the buying process, make sure you know without a doubt what your insurance will cover. Even if you're planning on buying completely out of pocket, having that information can help you when negotiating prices.  

  * A lot of credit unions offer Haden-specific loans at better rates than dealerships do, so check with them.  

  * In the US, your state should have an office of Haden affairs. The title will vary from state to state, but they should be your first point of contact if you're having any kind of trouble. They'll be the most up-to-date on the programs and policies that are available to you. More than that, they have more leverage than you do in negotiating with insurance companies.  

  * As a last resort, your state bar association will have a directory of law firms that specialize in Haden issues. Many of those firms will work on contingency for a sufficiently PR-friendly case (see "child-size threeps in high schools," above), and many others have resource portals on their websites.



 

**The Actual Buying Process**

 

Once you have your finances together, you get to the exciting part. There's a lot of good advice about this already online, so I'll stick to a few notes and move on.

  * If you're buying used, verify the VIN early in the process. Thanks to the twin miracles of GPS and cloud connectivity, threep theft is pretty hard to get away with, but it's still a thing. And you really don't want the FBI knocking on your door because you couldn't pass up a deal that was literally too good to be true.  

  * Do not skip the test drive. It used to be common to take a dealer model home for a full day, but that's less common these days because people were abusing it. Dealerships these days tend to allow you about an hour. In that hour, you should try to do a variety of the activities you'd be doing if you bought the threep. Use both your fine and gross motor skills as well as testing the features. If your family has a car, have someone bring it by so you can get into and out of it. Basically you want a feel for the kind of things the simulators either embellish or can't show.  

  * Run a diagnostic while you're in the threep you're buying! Dealers will show you their own diagnostic results, but dealers get paid to sell things. It's important to be sure.  

  * The extended warranty is always a scam. Always.



 

When You Get Home

  * As tempting as it may be to go out paragliding on your first day using a threep, it's best to take it easy. Even the highest-end models won't move exactly like your body used to (seriously, Mrs. Myers, if you're reading this I'm sorry about your geraniums) and there's a whole new level of sensory input in the form of sensors and the HUD. Polyproprioception is difficult. Take the time to acclimate.  

  * On the topic of sensory input, most dealerships (and all rental facilities) tend to crank up pain sensitivity. Turn it down to a reasonable level (but not the lowest) before you misjudge a movement.  

  * If you want a second charger, it's best to go directly through the manufacturer. It pains me to say this because brand-name charge panels are expensive, but there are a lot of cheap imitations out there. The more you use those, the more you risk shorting something. It's not worth it.  

  * If you have pets, expect them to be confused at first. Even if they're used to hearing your voice on household synthesizers, it's a big scary piece of machinery that doesn't smell like you.



 

If you liked this guide and found it useful, and if you have some money to spare, please consider sending a donation to Unlocking Life - they're doing some really amazing things to make sure that everybody in the world who needs a cradle, neural net, and network hookup can get them.


End file.
